Save Money, Here and There

“Debating, praising Marc Mauer: On reducing state spending through prisoner reductions” is a commentary piece written by Scott Henson, a former journalist, for his personal blog Grits for Breakfast. Henson has worked at different magazines and newspapers including The Daily Texan for years. He also has performed many works public education. The commentary explores an interview with Marc Mauer, the head of the national Sentencing Project. Henson mostly concurs with Mauer’s ideas on how to cut prison populations and spend less money. He strongly agrees with Mauer that a reasonable approach to save money is to close down some of the older prison facilities in rural areas that are more expensive to maintain. After listening to the original interview and reading Henson’s argument, where he also explains his own reasons supporting the claim, I was convinced that closing the older facilities could save tremendous amounts of money.

Henson does not agree with all Mauer’s thoughts, for instance he disagrees with Mauer’s claim that letting only one person out of the prison is not going to save that much money. Mauer’s reason for this claim is that the fixed costs of running a prison is not going to be altered by one less inmate. Henson on the other hand, argues that the fallacy in this argument is ignoring the 11 percent of leased private beds “for which the state pays a per-inmate-per-day rate.” I agree with him on this point. A significant saving can be achieved by cutting the number of leased contract beds. This is certainly a more viable option than letting prisoners out before fully serving their time. I believe the sentence reduction is not a logical approach. This sends a wrong signal to criminals that we are rewarding poor decisions and actions. No matter how much the state will save, it is not a logical answer. This small reduction can help state to save money in short term but it certainly is not a long term solution.